Growers that raise plants for retail sale commonly use containers or pots. By growing plants in containers, growers benefit in ease of transporting and managing the plants. Further, plants grown in containers or pots are less susceptible to root damage than field grown plants that are potted for sale.
One problem with plant containers is the difficulty in knowing what type of plant is in the pot. The beneficial ease of transporting the container exacerbates the identification problem when containers from one location are mixed with containers from other locations.
Growers and container manufacturers have devised a variety of plant identification tags and methods for applying the tags to their respective containers. Some tags are inserted into the soil adjacent to the plant, some tags attach to a container lip or a side of the container via a slit. Slits are difficult to use and penetrate with a tag, as the slit must be opened, which may be difficult due to the rigidity of the materials used to form containers. Ultimately, many of the users of containers having slits end up placing the tags in the soil. Accordingly, many of these techniques result in tags that are easily lost, or tags that are located in positions that are inconvenient to read, or containers that are less efficient to manufacture. Tags that are easily removable can decrease retailer revenue when plants are not properly identifiable when tags fall out or when consumers switch tags.
As many plant containers are made for temporary, one-time use, the cost of the container is important. Vacuum thermal formed containers in the prior art have been attractively priced compared to injection-molded containers. However, up until now, vacuum thermal formed containers had design difficulties that impeded production on high speed forming and printing equipment.
Many plant containers are manufactured in a location remote from the grower. Consequently, many plant containers are designed to nest together to maximize the efficiency of shipping and handling the containers. Some nested container designs can be difficult to separate once nested. This occurs when a large amount of the inside surface of one container contacts the outside surface of the nested container. These containers can nest so tightly that suction and friction make separating the containers difficult. When injection molding the containers, it is possible to add embossments to prevent the containers from nesting tightly.
Another concern in the manufacturing of containers is the printing of graphics and labels on the surface of the container. Some retailers desire printing to be on the outer surface of the container covering approximately 360 degrees around the container. Typically, when graphics are applied to the container, a single container is presented to a printing apparatus, where the container may be rotated while the printing apparatus applies a decoration. Some printing processes involve rotating the container in a desired orientation. One method used to orient the container during printing is to mold the container with features that the printing apparatus can contact as the part rotates in order to trace or follow or hold on to the shape of the feature. Alternately, a feature on the container may provide a smooth guide for orienting the container during rotation. In order for the container to be rotated efficiently and effectively, the container should not have features that stop or lock or interrupt a smooth rotation in a conventional high speed printing station.
Some thermal formed containers have features that prevent the containers from nesting too tightly. However, these prior thermal formed features impede the rotation of the container on conventional printing equipment.
Injection molding has been employed to manufacture plant containers. However, the injection molding process requires substantially uniform wall thicknesses that are thick enough for the molten thermoplastic to fill. This causes more material to be used than is structurally necessary. Further, the injection molding process is costly when making large volumes of parts. Injection molds with large numbers of cavities are expensive to manufacture, and must be run in large, expensive molding machines.
There remains a need in the art for a thermal formed plant container that overcomes one or more of these problems.